How Crime Shows Shape Our Understanding of the Law

By: Kemi-Ali Wessie

While I do have my reservations about justice and order, I will admit that many true crime and fictional crime shows have played a fundamental role in my understanding of the law. It all started with Legally Blonde to be honest, all those legal bars Elle dropped that sounded a hundred percent made up not only confused me but pointed me in the direction of my forever favourite; Law & Order. I love a good procedural! Although American law enforcement is problematic to say the least, Olivia Benson was my number one. She was kicking ass and cuffing people like some well-dressed superhero in heeled leather boots who took no bullsh*t. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit typically focuses on a pandemic we know all too well and I’m not talking about Covid-19, sexual assault and rape rates in South Africa are at an alarming and disturbing high.

I have fond memories of spending the whole weekend watching shows like Midsomer Murders, Bones, Rizzoli & Isles to the likes of Wives With Knives, Snapped!, Southern Fried Homicide and my all-time ultimate hands down favourite CSI (literally every single one). It wasn’t the types of crimes that made my mind go around in circles, although some of them quite questionable and suspicious. It was how many things they did that were actually, really, super definitely, unequivocally illegal and I don’t actually mean the whole murder thing, it’s the little things, the laws we actually don’t know too much about. Knowing laws about child pornography and statutory rape made me feel like Elle Woods in that court room. Although these shows brought some joy and entertainment value to my life in some weird way, I cannot deny that the decrease of our trust in law enforcement and the justice Image: IMDb website

system does play a fundamental role in our broad

understanding of the law.

Essentially we want to know about everything that can get us arrested. This is not to say that our society is just filled with undercover criminals (or is it?), we’ve seen the implications and consequences of law violations in the shows and films we watch and obviously do not want to end up like Mrs. Rich Lady in Manhattan who engaged in some spicy little debaucherous tryst with her underage son’s best friend and obviously do not want to meet the same fate in some unflattering shade of correctional department issued overalls and drinking toilet brewed hooch. The law is prickly and increasingly becomes more confusing at every turn, there’s no doubt in that, but thanks to our strange and thoroughly entertaining fascination with the macabre and illegal we will never run out of content showing us all the fun and new things we can get arrested for! HM